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Teenage soldier (1412–31) whose “voices” told her to save France from the English. Captured and burnt at the stake. Canonized in 1920.

Barbey (1808–89), novelist, commentator, conversationalist and, as an admirer of Byron and Brummell, inveterate dandy, was still able to scandalize at 66, when he published Les Diaboliques . Born in St-Saveur-le-Vicomte, he was raised on a diet of Norman tales told by a family servant.

Founded in 1140, La Trappe was one of the Cistercian monasteries which adopted the Strict Observance – silence, prayer, abstinence, manual labour – introduced by Abbé de Rancé in the 1660s. Thereafter, they were known as Trappist monasteries; there is another at Bricquebec.

This vast and austerely beautiful church owes its scale to a casket containing the Holy Blood of Christ, said to have been washed ashore in the trunk of a fig tree in the 1st century. The abbey built on the spot in the early 13th century attracted streams of pilgrims. Le Précieux Sang is still venerated today.

From the 17th to 19th centuries, lace was all the rage across Europe. In Normandy, Alençon, Argentan and Bayeux were the three main centres of production, each with their own technique. Exquisite examples can be seen in all three towns, while Bayeux’s bobbin lace with its intricate floral motif is still made by a dedicated group of craftswomen (see Conservatoire de la Dentelle).

Influential Italian lawyer-monk (1005–1089). Became William the Conqueror’s Archbishop at Canterbury.

In 1034, a knight called Herluin exchanged his charger for a donkey and founded a religious community on the banks of the River Risle. When he was joined some eight years later by the influential Italian theologians Lanfranc and Anselm, the monastery grew to become the intellectual heart of Normandy. Disbanded in the Revolution and later demolished, it again became a Benedictine monastery in 1948 (see A Drive Along the Risle, Abbaye Notre-Dame, Le Bec-Hellouin).

The ancestral home of the Harcourt family has an important arboretum, created in 1802.

Set near the author’s native Rouen, this classic ruffled contemporary feathers.